I was knocked back a little this morning- Billy Graham of the tent meetings and crusade passed from us last night.

I knew him all my life- he spanned all my conscious memory, and is one of the last of those who served the nation when it really meant something all those years ago. He reappeared in my mind a few years back with the publication of Laura Hilldbrande’s book “Unbroken,” the remarkable saga of Bomber navigator and Olympian Louie Zamperalli. On a May afternoon in 1943, his Liberator crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving “only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.”

He drifted in his raft into a survival against the sea, and then against the Japanese who recovered him. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War- a well-told story, but one that was larger than our lives. At the end of it, liberated against all odds from torture and captivity, Louie returned home but deeply troubled. He began drinking to dull the pain, though numb did not provide solace.

Billy had one of his tent crusades near San Francisco in 1945, and Louie went.

He was saved.

If I could ever have done something like that, I would consider my life validated. God Bless you, Pastor Graham. Rest in Peace.

– Vic